Twoton's Pitcher Post

Friday, March 12, 2010

Herper's Ball, Taiwan Style

Mr. Onionsack, the man in these images, was so nice as to put this together....

Sunday, February 28, 2010

SNAKESOFTAIWAN.COM finally ONLINE!

Ladies and gentlefolk,

I'm proud to announce that after six months of gruesome toil, our long-awaited website SNAKES OF TAIWAN has finally gone online.

This website was conceived out of a need for complete, one-stop information on the snakes of Taiwan. Before we created this site, the only comparable resources were a number of field guides in Chinese, most of them outdated. Similar material in English did not exist at all.

With this site we hope to provide exhaustive and current knowledge in both languages: tons of photos and videos from the field, taxonomic descriptions, info on biology, ecology, distribution, etymology, toxicology and more - and if that's not enough, there are copious links to even more information on the Web.

The site is organized like a field guide, i.e., all species on the main menu are arranged by colors and patterns rather than in alphabetical order. This facilitates quick identification of any snakes you might encounter in the wilds of Taiwan.

Mr. Onionsack and I, the authors of this site, are not professional herpetologists, just two average guys with a strong infatuation for Taiwan's serpentofauna. We have researched and now present the information on this site to the best of our knowledge and abilities. If you spot any mistakes, errors, blunders, bloopers, typos, or maybe just have a comment or two, or want to link to your site with our banner, we would love to hear from you - please drop me a note!

Thank you very much in advance for your help and your patronage!

Cheers

Hans
PS: The Chinese part is still being translated and will go online in March - we'll let you know when it's done :-)

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Mammals Suck At Ambush Hunting?

Guess the sit-and-wait approach just doesn't work for endotherms, as these two images prove.

(Pearls Before Swine, 2/9/10; copyright Stephen Pastis)

Friday, January 1, 2010

Flickr: Snakes Eating in the Wild

Twelve pages of images of one of the Holy Grails of field herping.....there's videos, too.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Snake Talks in Schools: Media Update

The media are taking note. Two cable news stations have reported so far, one more to come tomorrow, and the second-largest newspaper ran a piece on my snake classes today.

Here's one of the TV news reports online:

Part One

Part Two

Happy Christmas from (relatively) Christmas-free Taiwan!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

An Approach to Fear of Snakes

I talk about ophidiophobia during my snake lectures in elementary schools (there are always some kids who display it). I tell them I know some of them fear snakes, and that it's OK, because phobias are normal. I tell them I'm not afraid of having any "disgusting" animal walk all over my body, including tarantulas, cockroaches and millipedes. I ramp up the excitement listing these eeew-y animals that I don't fear at all, eeeew-ing the students out to the max....and then I put the needle to the balloon: "But you know what I really AM afraid of? Flying. I become a pant-wetting wreck as soon as the plane takes off." (Well, it's not THAT bad, but "Chief Whiteknuckle" is one of my nicknames). That results in much head-shaking and giggling, because for most kids, sitting in an airplane is boring at best, not a cause for utter terror. Then I continue "And you know why? No? Me neither. It's all in the head, and it's something you need to identify as irrational and then fight it, because phobias mess up your lives"

That usually makes them think . "Wow, that big man with the six-foot snake around his neck, the guy who seeks out kraits and pitvipers in the dark of night, and takes close-up photos of them.....he actually FEARS something, and something that silly at that?"